The Neighborhood Podcast
This is a podcast of Guilford Park Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, North Carolina featuring guests from both inside the church and the surrounding community. Hosted by Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing, Head of Staff.
The Neighborhood Podcast
"Strangers & Neighbors" (March 9, 2025 Sermon)
Preaching: Rev. Stephen M. Fearing
The familiar parable of the Good Samaritan takes on profound new meaning during Lent as we explore what it means to move between stranger and neighbor in a post-pandemic world. This powerful sermon connects Jesus's ancient teaching to our current reality, where COVID-19 has dramatically reshaped how we view others – often turning us into hyper-individualists who see strangers primarily as threats rather than potential neighbors.
Drawing on Martin Luther King Jr.'s revolutionary interpretation of this parable, we're challenged to think beyond individual acts of mercy to systemic change. King famously said he was "tired of picking up people along the Jericho Road" and instead wanted to "fix the Jericho Road" – to pave it, add streetlights, and make it safe passage for everyone. This distinction between charity (love for a moment) and justice (love extended into the future) transforms how we understand Jesus's command to "go and do likewise."
The sermon introduces the powerful Greek word "splagnizomai" – literally meaning "my insides hurt" – which describes the Samaritan's compassion that compelled him to act. This visceral response to others' suffering is precisely what Christ calls us to cultivate, especially when voices around us treat compassion as weakness. We're invited to discover where our own "splagnizomai" leads us, finding the intersection between our passion and the world's needs through partnerships with local organizations addressing everything from food insecurity to immigration, homelessness, LGBTQ+ rights, and medical debt. When we engage in this sacred work, we discover that the line between stranger and neighbor blurs, exactly as Jesus taught. How might your church become not just a destination people come to, but a springboard from which people go out to make our communal Jericho roads safer for everyone?
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Let us pray, gracious God, we love to ask you questions, we love to throw our wonderings at the sky, to bring our curiosity to your feet, to examine, beseech and imagine all day long. But when the answers come, we don't always like what we hear. Awaken our curiosity in us, awaken a penchant for listening, and make room in our spirits for your word to land With hope. We question, we wonder, we dream, we listen, amen. Our scripture today is a familiar passage from Luke 10, verses 25 through 37, the story of the prodigal son. Just then, a lawyer stood up to test Jesus, teacher. He said what must I do to inherit eternal life? He said to him what is written in the law? What do you read there? He answered you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself. And he said to him you have given the right answer. Do this and you will live. But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus and who is my neighbor?
Speaker 1:Jesus replied a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers who stripped him, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead Now.
Speaker 1:By chance, a priest was going down that road and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him passed by on the other side passed by on the other side, but a Samaritan, while traveling, came near him and when he saw him he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper and said Take care of him and when I come back I will repay you whatever more you spend. Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? He said the one who showed him mercy. Jesus said to him go and do likewise. Holy wisdom, holy word friends, let us pray.
Speaker 2:The Lord made the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, o Lord, our rock and our redeemer, amen. So, friends, on Ash Wednesday last week, we began our Lenten series Everything in Between, meeting God in the midst of extremes. Together, we'll spend this season walking through Luke's version of Jesus's journey to the cross. Each worship service will have a sub-theme that has two supposed binaries for our consideration. Last week, we smeared ashes on our forehead and talked about intention and action. Other stops over the next several weeks will have the themes of faith and works, lost and found, shouting and silence, grief and hope. As my colleague Lau Gwengarity says, we often consider these ideas to be opposing. However, as we explore these concepts within the scriptures, we find nuance and complexity. We'll find that these dichotomies are false. We might begin to see a full spectrum instead of black and white. We might find that God is present in between. And the sub-theme for today is stranger and neighbor, and the text is one that I preached on just a few months ago to begin our sermon series on health care, that we called Sacred the Body. It's the familiar story of the Good Samaritan. I hope y'all aren't tired of it. So far familiar story of the Good Samaritan. I hope y'all aren't tired of it. So far that was a pretty low attended Sunday, as that was the weekend that we had that really especially nasty weather back in January. So if you remember it, great. If not, allow me this brief summary of what we talked about then.
Speaker 2:The story of the Good Samaritan reminds us that the good news of the gospel is good news for our neighbor's bodies as much as it is our neighbor's souls. So therefore, a gospel-centered theology acknowledges the holistic implications of being a Christian, that we're called to treat all flesh as holy. I think that's something that this congregation gets pretty intuitively as holy. I think that's something that this congregation gets pretty intuitively. So today I want to approach this familiar text from a very different angle, as it turns out. You may recall that this week marked the five-year anniversary of the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. I read an op-ed this week in a newspaper that explored the author's views of the sociological impacts, the long-term impacts, of the pandemic, and the author opined that one of the most dramatic and long-lasting impacts of COVID-19 was that, in ways that we both understand and maybe don't understand it turned many of us perhaps all of us into hyper-individualists. The author said the following about the beginning of the pandemic.
Speaker 2:At first the solidarity was breathtaking. Out of concern for ourselves and one another, we suspended nearly all interpersonal activity for months, wiping our lives almost entirely clean of the very people we were trying to protect. But, perversely, that solidarity destroyed our social fabric. Isolated, we saw one another first as threats and then as something less than real. Covid unfolded on screens for most Americans, and although the experience was in many ways collective, all our screens were different. Some showed overflowing morgues, others revealing a sham overflowing morgues, others revealing a sham. Soon, we began to worry less about how our actions affected others and more on how theirs affected us. So another way to put it might be this the gospel of Christ compels us to continually widen the window of who we consider to be neighbors, and one of the nasty byproducts of the pandemic is that it caused us to look upon others with an acute suspicion and therefore, led us to kind of narrow that window of whom we consider to be our neighbor.
Speaker 2:To be sure, I think this innate suspicion of the other was already brewing in this country long before March of 2020, but the pandemic sent it into overdrive, which is why there are worse scriptures to preach on more than once in a few months than the parable of the good samaritan. Martin luther king jr once famously said that the radical nature of the parable was that the good samaritan reversed a question raised by the levites and the priest, the levite and the priest king. The Levite and the priest King, said, asked themselves the following understandable question what will happen to me if I stop and help this man? The Good Samaritan, on the other hand, king said, reversed the question, asking himself what will happen to the man if I don't stop to help him? You know, as it turns out, this scripture was one of the last ones that Martin Luther King Jr preached on before he was assassinated. In that speech, he described a trip he once took to the Holy Land, where he walked the Jericho Road, the very path that served as the location for this familiar story that Levina read for us. Mlk remarked at how the road twists and turns, has rapid elevation changes and offers bandits and robbers numerous places to hide and ambush their victims. He wanted to look deeper and ask why it was even necessary in the first place for the good Samaritan to do what he did. You know, it's been said that if you walk along a beach and you find a dead fish washed up on the shore, you naturally ask what's wrong with the fish. But if you walk along a beach and you find a thousand dead fish washed up along the shore, you ask yourselves a different question what's wrong with the water?
Speaker 2:Martin Luther King Jr, in his speech given, as I said, shortly before he was murdered in an act of political violence, preached a sermon that compels us to ask different questions when there are those around us who are falling in distress on the Jericho Road. In that sermon, martin Luther King Jr said the following. He said I think the Good Samaritan is a great individual. I of course like and respect the Good Samaritan, but I don't want to be a Good Samaritan. Dr King continued I'm tired of picking up people along the Jericho Road. I am tired of seeing people battered and bruised and bloody injured and jumped on along the Jericho Roads of life. This road is dangerous. I don't want to pick up anyone else along the Jericho Road.
Speaker 2:I want to fix the Jericho Road.
Speaker 2:I want to pave the Jericho Road, add streetlights to the Jericho Road, make the Jericho Road safe passage for everybody.
Speaker 2:What I think MLK was pointing us to was an honest conversation about the difference between individual acts of charity and the need for communal acts of justice that address the systems that keep the Jericho roads around us dangerous places.
Speaker 2:As my new colleague here in Greensboro, reverend Mark Sandlin, put it a few weeks ago charity is love for a moment. Justice is love extended into the future. So I wonder what that might mean for us to build a world where good Samaritans are no longer needed. I wonder what it might look like for a stranger and neighbor to walk the Jericho road together in peace. I wonder what it might feel to develop a culture where the following truth is understood that we all walk the Jericho road together and that what hurts one of us hurts all of us, and what blesses one of us blesses all of us. And if you want to do your part to make the jericho road safer for your neighbor, if you want to help build the kingdom of god where strangers aren't seen as threats to be eliminated but as neighbors to be loved, then I have a very concrete invitation.
Speaker 2:Get involved in a local non-profit that addresses a need that you are passionate about, and here's why I say that Partially. I say it because we, as Christians, are not called to do this work alone. We are called to partner with our allies in the community to build a more just, verdant and equitable world. But I also say that because of this, our nonprofit leaders are themselves Good Samaritans and they're also doing the work to address the systemic issues that keep the Jericho Ro roads a treacherous place, you know you've probably heard me say that my favorite Greek word is in today's passage.
Speaker 2:Say it with me. Yeah, close enough, all right, it's the Greek word for moved with compassion. It's that word that is used in today's passage towards the Samaritan, or rather the feeling that he had towards the man in distress. Splagditsomai is the feeling that compelled him to act. In Greek, splagnizomai literally means my inside's hurt. It's that gut feeling you have when you know that something isn't right, that feeling you have when you know that there's someone who needs help and there are voices around us that say that splagnizomai is a weakness. We live in a moment of suspicion when the forces of empire are trying to take away our splagnizomai. We won't let them do it, because Jesus tells us that our splagnizomai is what keeps us human, it's what allows us to follow him to the cross, it's what subverts the powers of empire. Our splagnizomai is what will repair the Jericho Road. Our splagnizomai is what turns stranger into neighbor. And so I invite you to be curious about your splagnizomai.
Speaker 2:If you have splagnizomai for the children in our city who don't know where their next meal is coming from. Talk to Leslie Lloyd or myself or someone else at a simple gesture, and we'll share with you not only how to be a good Samaritan, but also how to fix the Jericho Road. If you have sphagnitzomai for immigrants, documented or undocumented, then work with our partners at Faith Action International. They'll tell you how to be a good Samaritan and how we can work together to fix the Jericho Road. If you have spanked it, so my for the growing number of people experiencing homelessness in Greensboro because of the pandemic of the lack of affordable housing and the rising cost of groceries, then work with our partners at Greensboro Urban Ministry. They'll tell you how to be a good Samaritan and how we can work together to fix the Jericho Road. If you have sphagnetomai for our.
Speaker 2:LGBT neighbors. Then work with our partners at Guilford Green Foundation. They'll tell you how to be a good Samaritan and how to fix the Jericho road. And if you have swag needs to mind for those who struggle with the crippling debt of weight of medical debt, then talk to a member of our justice and peacemaking committee. We're looking into starting a fund at the church to address that need. And then talk to one of our healthcare professionals who are members of this passionate congregation. They'll tell you how to be a good Samaritan and how together we can fix the Jericho Road.
Speaker 1:And hear me friends.
Speaker 2:You don't have to be equally passionate about all of those things, and that's okay. We have lots of people in this church with various political and theological beliefs, and that's okay. You're not called to be everything for everybody. But spend some time in prayer this Lenten season. I invite you to spend some time in curiosity, Figure out where your splagnizomai, where your insides hurt for a neighbor in need, where your passion and the world's needs intersect that's called discipleship and explore what Jesus is calling you to do and be.
Speaker 2:I'll close with this. What if we developed a reputation around here where neighbors don't say look at all those people who go to Guilford Park, but look at all those people who come from Guilford Park. You hear the difference in those two statements, church, you hear me? What if we develop a culture where this church isn't seen so much as a destination for people to come to but a springboard from which people go out to make the Jericho roads safer for us all? And when we do that, we just might find that that line between stranger and neighbor isn't quite as defined as those who oppress want us to think it is. In the name of God, the creator, redeemer and sustainer, may all of us, God's neighbors, say Amen.